They came to his bedroom, and he easily laid down in his own bed with his black blanket drawn up to his chin. There, he could feel that at least half of his face was completely wrecked. Scratched and cut, puffy from the bite, and red from the antibiotics. On the back of his head a lump was growing and the pressure ached inside of his skull.
Nansen was the closest thing to a doctor that Iggy had, and now he calmly bandaged each knick and cut with tape and shredded cotton. He took his time to do each perfectly, too. When finished, he cleared the area, and knelt alongside the bed, holding Iggy's cold left hand in between his own. Nansen liked to hold his left hand as a gesture of kindness and intimacy, especially because he was the only one allowed to, but Iggy pulled it away and held it against his chest. Nansen's eyes rounded and his lips parted to speak, but Iggy spoke first. "You don't have to touch it," he whispered with the acidity of shame.
Nansen lifted himself taller on his knees. "What? Why not?"
Iggy tried to stay calm and lie, but a heavy sob suffocated him. He bowed his head and crowded his fingers against his eyes, wincing with pain as the first tears dripped salt into his wounds. "I thought that my situation was already bad," he whimpered, "but now, I won't see anything at all… I'm wrecked. Maybe, it is a good thing that I won't be able to see myself… how ugly I've become."
Nansen leant in to protest, "no, don't say such things," but then the doorknob rattled behind him.
The door opened and Baine entered the room, ruffled and ragged, with a bowl of boiled potatoes in his hands and a fork sticking right out of the top. His knuckles and fingers were tinted dark brown and smudges of the same color were scattered all over his clothes. He came to the bedside and held the bowl out for Iggy to take, but Iggy showed no interest in it. Nansen took it himself and stabbed the first chunk of potato with the fork and he held it to Iggy's mouth, but Iggy's mouth remained still.
"Ig, you haven't eaten in days," Baine lied.
"It's true," Nansen chimed in. "For a seventeen year old, you hardly eat anything, but even now, especially for the last week or so, you've been turned off by food all together. What's going on?"
Iggy looked up into Nansen's eyes and felt guilt. He was about to form a frown, but Nansen's arms wrapped around him before he could and embraced him in a warm tender hug. Nansen loved Iggy, and this love fueled Iggy's hope many times again. It saved him from falling into the abyss of debilitating depression when he was eight and every other night that Iggy became overwhelmed in the constant isolation and inherent abandonment that he felt. Nansen's happiness and contentment was important to Iggy, and he knew that if he should end Nansen's pain, then he needed to end his own first.
So, he slipped his face out of the hold, grabbed the fork from Nansen's hand, and ate one bite. Just one bite. It doesn't seem like much, but for him it was difficult. Nansen recognized the struggle and he smiled a smile that was drowned in sadness, patted his shoulder, and praised his effort.
Baine cleared his throat. "That woman says she came from the Silgria house where they've been attacked," he said. There was tension in his voice. "She traveled forty miles in nothing but a cloak in daylight to send the message."
Nansen's tone neither implied untruthfulness on the stranger's part, nor accountability. "What are you going to do then?" He stuck another piece of potato on the fork. "Believe her?"
"I don't see why else she would've come here. Meeting Iggy outside wasn't supposed to happen."
Iggy closed his eyes tightly, feeling the scene at its climax, again. Flushing with anger, he turned his face away from the food. Nansen gritted his teeth in frustration.
"Up until that point," Baine continued, "she had followed orders appropriately to send the message. We have to go answer the message."
"What?" Nansen looked up at him shockingly. "Now?"
"Yes, indeed." Baine paced toward the door. "She said that the trip took her alone 6 hours running. We can make it there in half the time, but to make it back before sunrise, we need to go now. We'll bring back as many survivors as we find, but most importantly their young one, Emi. If she's lost in this whole ordeal, we'll lose our investment in the Silgria's. So, I'm taking everyone with me on this rescue. The house will be empty." Without hesitation and with nothing more to say, Baine walked out and shut the door quietly behind himself.
Nansen set the bowl of potatoes onto the bed and glared at the closed door. "So much for my input," he huffed, jabbing a potato with the fork like a dagger to a criminal. "As second in command, you'd think he would ask me what I thought."
During the next hour, all the members gathered and drove a trail of four cars across the territorial brick walls and across the inner mile. It was a long road lined with thick untouched forest. There, animals and plants lived unbothered between two large brick walls in their own cushion of nature. The drive through was quick. Only one mile. Then, the group lined up at the middle wall's iron gate. The gate cranked open and they entered the outer mile.
The outer mile was a village of tens of thousands of people, stretching many miles around in a huge loop. The trees were thinned and small homes were closely packed together in clusters. Dim oil lamps burned from front doors and windows. Each home had a rain system consisting of a large barrel that collected water from the sky. Straight outlines of sheds, chicken coops, and greenhouses casted their reflections of the canopy of stars hovering overhead.
The cars crept to a stop in front of the outermost wall. This wall was the cocoon that held the entire community together. It was structured from the bones of large boulders and beams sealed together with concrete. It was the largest, thickest, and more intimidating than the two walls inside of it.
Baine rolled down his window and fresh air blew through the car. It was cold against his face and inside of his lungs. Rich with the smells of people. Salt, boiled vegetables, and chicken. He looked across at Amare who sat beside him in the passenger seat. His black flawless skin blended in perfectly with his black guard gear.
"Take everyone and stand guard," Baine ordered him. "I want to go alone."
"That's foolish," Amare responded. "If you encounter an obstacle, who is going to help you?"
Baine shook his head. "I have a good feeling that the obstacles have already been removed for me. Get everyone else on the same page. Then, open the gate for me."
Amare spied the cars behind them in the rearview mirror. He held his handheld radio up to his mouth and held the button. "We're guarding the full perimeter tonight. Let's get going."
The three cars behind him shifted off of the road. Seventeen people got out. Dressed in all black, armed with radios, and pistols that could shoot a single shot at a time. They climbed up the side of the wall and spread themselves along until they could no longer see one another. Against the starry night, they practically vanished.
Amare turned toward Baine and held out his hand. "I wish you luck, sir."
Baine took it, shook, and let him go. "If I'm not back by sunrise, kill that woman locked in the basement."
"With pleasure." Amare climbed up the side of the wall and stood with his awaiting team. Baine peered ahead at where the road and wall met. The road seemed to end there, but it was deceptive on purpose. From the inside of the wall, two house members cranked the stone entrance to the side, allowing only enough for his car to pass through. Then he laid his foot flat to the gas pedal and sped through the barrier on the only road of the vast mountain valley that leads away from New Eden, a path deeply sheltered beneath heavy untended forest.